Mars in a Month? Hook Up the Fusion Drive

Getting to Mars with current tech would take years, but UW and MSNW researchers are working on a fusion-powered spacecraft that could make round trip in just 30 days.

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Researchers at the University of Washington are working on a fusion-powered spacecraft that could theoretically ferry astronauts to Mars and back in just 30 daysshaving off years from what scientists believe a trip using current technology would take.

The project, funded by NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program and also involving Redmond, Wash.-based space propulsion company MSNW, is exploring a "unique manipulation of nuclear fusion," according to the University of Washington. If the technology works, it could cut down the time it takes for interplanetary voyages while also reducing costs and the health risks faced by humans making such trips,.

The technology the team is working on involves "a type of plasma that is encased in its own magnetic field" which can be compressed with the magnetic field to produce nuclear fusion, according to the university. Lead researcher John Slough and his team have had success with laboratory tests of the process and reported their findings at a technical conference in March, when NASA offered them a second round of funding.

"Using existing rocket fuels, it's nearly impossible for humans to explore much beyond Earth. We are hoping to give us a much more powerful source of energy in space that could eventually lead to making interplanetary travel commonplace," Slough was quoted by the university as saying.

NASA currently puts the time it would take to make a round-trip voyage to Mars at a whopping four years or more using chemical rocket fuel. Launching a crewed capsule on such a trip would cost more than $12 billion, the University of Washington noted.

The team from the University of Washington and MSNW are looking at trips to Mars that could take from 30 to 90 days and cost considerably less.

Meanwhile, Dennis Tito and his Inspiration Mars Foundation team earlier this year announced an ambitious plan to send a pair of astronauts on a flyby trip to Mars as early as 2018. That voyage would take 500 days, according to the foundation, which is shooting for an early 2018 launch to take advantage of Earth's proximity to its neighbor at that time.

One major concern facing astronauts making long voyages in space is prolonged exposure to cosmic radiation and solar-charged particles. The Inspiration Mars Foundation has floated the idea of using food, liquid, and even human waste materials to help shield its spacecraft's interior from harmful radiation during the proposed Mars trip.

But cutting down the actual time spent in space to the extent the University of Washington researchers propose to do would seem to be an even better way to protect astronauts from such health risks. The limited exposure to cosmic rays experienced by the Apollo astronauts on their journeys to the Moon did not appear to result in later health problems for them, for example.

But prolonged exposure is a big concern. On Earth, the planet's atmosphere and magnetosphere, as well as the interplanetary magnetic field, protect us from the most harmful radiation. Humans aboard low-earth orbit spacecraft like the International Space Station are also protected by the terrestrial and interplanetary magnetic fields, but not by the lower atmosphere's opacity to certain types of low-energy cosmic rays.

Cost-cutting could be achieved with a fusion drive for interplanetary spacecraft in part by simply reducing the amount of fuel needed by several orders of magnitude. Using fusion, fuel material the size of a grain of sand would have "the same energy content as one gallon of rocket fuel," according to the scientists.

The University of Washington and MSNW researchers have been successful in conducting lab test of each step in their fusion process and now "the key will be combining each isolated test into a final experiment that produces fusion using this technology," Slough told the university.

MSNW, which is also working on an electromagnetic plasmoid thruster and an electrodeless Lorentz Force thruster, describes the proposed fusion-driven rocket as working by "employing the propellant to compress and heat a magnetized plasma to fusion conditions, and thereby channel the fusion energy released into heating only the propellant [p]assage of the hot propellant through a magnetic nozzle rapidly converts this thermal energy into both directed (propulsive) energy and electrical energy."

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Japan Times, among other newspapers and periodicals.
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